Case-sensitive Keystore for PKCS#12

Xuelei Fan xuelei.f at gmail.com
Wed Jul 13 21:40:29 UTC 2022



> On Jul 13, 2022, at 2:20 PM, Michael StJohns <mstjohns at comcast.net> wrote:
> 
> On 7/13/2022 3:26 PM, Xuelei Fan wrote:
>> Is it possible make it in the application layer?  For example, mapping case-sensitive name to case-in-sensitive name before calling into the standard KeyStore APIs.  It may be not good to break the standards for corner cases?
>> 
>> Xuelei
> 
> Hi Xuelei -
> 
> It wouldn't actually be breaking the PKCS12 spec - the addition of more attributes is part of the standard.
I agreed it could not break PKCS12 spec.  I referred to the friendlyName spec in PKCS12.  An additional attribute could be used for the case-in-sensitive name support.  But there is a need to define and support the attribute in the KeyStore implementation, just as you described in your previous reply.


>   Nor, given the CaseExactJKS implementation, would it be breaking the JDK spec AFAICT.  There is this in the KeyStore javadoc:
> 
>> Whether aliases are case sensitive is implementation dependent. In order to avoid problems, it is recommended not to use aliases in a KeyStore that only differ in case. 
> The approach you suggest wouldn't work, because you couldn't store one key with "MikesKey" and another with "MIKESKEY" in the Keystore.
> 

I did not meant to cover the case.  It may be fine to use a map, in which “MikesKey” may be mapped to “mikeskkey-1000100”, and MIKESKEY to “mikeskkey-0000000”, or something else like you described below ("Mike" -> "04mike8”).

Xuelei


> Hmm - let me rephrase that slightly.  You could use this approach, but not in the way you suggested.  Instead, you'd need a transform from a String to a unique string that you could use inside the key store.  The actual alias within the keystore would be the unique string.
> 
> One way of doing that: Lowercase the string.  Prepend the string with a 2 character length field.   Post pend the string with a hex field of CEIL(length/16) characters, each hex character representing 16 bits that indicate the case of the string.
> 
> e.g. "Mike" -> "04mike8"
> 
> Just a thought - Mike
> 
>> 
>>> On Jul 13, 2022, at 4:38 AM, Ravi Patel8 <Ravi.Patel8 at ibm.com> wrote:
>>> 
>>> We have a customer who is having a security requirement. He wants to know, Is it possible to have case-sensitive support for PKCS#12? We referred the RFCs for PKCS#12. We found that PKCS#12 uses a case in-sensitive alias and the alias Name is mapped with friendlyName attribute, which is specified as  "caseIgnoreMatch" as below.
>>> 
>>> friendlyName ATTRIBUTE ::= {
>>>           WITH SYNTAX BMPString (SIZE(1..pkcs-9-ub-friendlyName))
>>>           EQUALITY MATCHING RULE caseIgnoreMatch
>>>           SINGLE VALUE TRUE
>>>           ID pkcs-9-at-friendlyName
>>>   }
>>> 
>>> The RFCs can be found here:
>>> https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc7292
>>> https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc2985#page-19
>>> 
>>> The JKS key store(case in-sensitive alias)  has a special version (CaseExactJKS) that uses case sensitive aliases.
>>> So similarly, Will it be acceptable to have a case sensitive version of PKCS#12 as CaseExactPKCS12 which will use case sensitive aliases?
> 
> 




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